Home Hardware

ST. JACOBS — In his nearly 50 years with Home Hardware Stores Ltd., many milestones stand out for president and chief executive officer Paul Straus.

But if he had to pick just one, a prime candidate would be the company’s paint plant in Burford, Ont.

In 1980, the home improvement retailer decided to start making its own paint. Previously it hired Sherwin-Williams to manufacture Home Hardware’s exclusive line of Beauti-Tone paint.

But Sherwin-Williams decided to start selling its own paint to compete with Beauti-Tone, so Home Hardware felt it was time to sever the relationship, Straus told dealer-owners, staff and guests during a speech at the company’s spring market in St. Jacobs on Monday.

It first investigated building its own paint plant, but soon became aware of a linen factory for sale in Burford.

Around this time, Home Hardware’s co-founder and chief executive officer Walter Hachborn had to go to Britain for a speaking engagement.

He turned to Straus, at that time the company’s vice-president and controller, and told him to go to Burford to close the deal. It was Straus’ first big assignment for the company.

“That was a little scary for me because that was before BlackBerrys and communication. I couldn’t phone Walter to say, ‘They want $800,000 for this thing.’ ”

But Straus got the deal done and to this day the Burford plant is churning out paint for the company’s 1,100 stores across the country.

It was one of numerous highlights cited by Straus over the company’s 49-year history and the 100 markets it held in that time.

For three days every April and September, the west side of St. Jacobs becomes a sea of red jackets and bow ties.

More than 10,000 visitors descend on the town for the company’s semi-annual market, a giant trade show where 3,600 dealers and staff pore over the latest products from more than 4,800 vendors.

Red is the company’s official colour and the bow tie is the sartorial item of choice for Hachborn, who is attending this spring’s market at the age of 91.

Another 800 Home Hardware employees set up and staff the markets, where dealer-owners and employees attend educational sessions, network and check out exhibits such as the company’s bright and shiny model store, decked out in the latest flooring, lighting, signage and display arrangements.

Guests at the market occupy more than 3,000 hotel rooms in the area and injected $13 million into the local economy over the past 20 years, the company estimates.

The first market was held in the old Hollinger Hardware on King Street in St. Jacobs in 1963.

As attendance grew, it moved to the Elmira Arena, a warehouse on Phillip Street in Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Bingemans in Kitchener before settling in its current location, the 225,000-square-foot Henry Sittler building at the company’s massive distribution centre on Henry Street in St. Jacobs.

Straus, who took over day-to-day management of the company in 1989, related a long list of accomplishments over Home Hardware’s history.

Among them were the first shipment to Atlantic Canada in 1965, opening the Home Furniture line in 1978, the 1980 amalgamation with Link Hardware in western Canada that took the chain to 700 stores, and reaching $1 billion in annual sales in 1996.

Today, the company’s annual sales are about $2.3 billion.

Home Hardware even played a role in the launch of the BlackBerry smartphone, Straus said. In the 1990s, a desperate Mike Lazaridis, co-founder of BlackBerry, came to the hardware chain with a plea to purchase digital signs.

The subsequent order helped him obtain a bank loan to keep the tech startup afloat while it worked on the first smartphone, Straus said.